Lethal and non-lethal violent acts on school property are becoming more and more common, ranging from the most horrific shooting events to schoolyard fights. According to the K-12 School Shooting Database, there were 349 school shooting incidents across the country in 2023, meaning the U.S. averaged nearly one shooting every day. These incidents resulted in 249 victims, either wounded or killed, not including the shooter. In addition, non-lethal violence occurs daily in the form of student conflicts, bullying, and physical fights. This type of commotion substantially disrupts the educational process and causes enormous amounts of stress, anxiety, and trauma in schools and communities.

These commonplace occurrences have prompted a variety of responses from school districts and government actors alike. According to 2020 data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), 65% of public schools employ security staff and 51% have sworn law enforcement officers carrying firearms in schools (the latter are commonly referred to as school resource officers, or SROs).  These numbers decreased in 2021, with only 61% and 45% of schools employing security and law enforcement officers respectively. Over 90% of public schools have developed written procedures for handling active shooter situations, and 98% regularly perform active shooter drills. A handful of districts have taken extreme measures such as equipping schools with AR-15s.

School threat assessment is also recommended. The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) recommends that schools develop a systematic and coordinated approach to gather and share information on potential threats. All of the information should be in one place on a centralized platform, making schools well-positioned to receive tips on planned attacks and respond appropriately. In 2019, 51% of public schools reported having a centralized tip line that can be used by students, teachers, or other personnel to report threats.  Four years later, in 2023, this number remained approximately the same. 

In addition, the Department of Homeland Security’s National Threat Assessment Center (NTAC) provides guidance for schools to develop comprehensive targeted violence prevention plans. A key part of this school threat assessment approach includes developing a multidisciplinary threat assessment team who can define and identify prohibited and concerning behaviors, determine whether law enforcement intervention is needed, and assess the credibility of potential threats as they arise.

In this post, we will describe the challenges associated with school safety and school threat assessment and provide resources on key topics. We also describe how active threat assessment and situational awareness training can help support school personnel to prevent violence in schools.

The Challenge of Safe Schools

The constantly changing environment poses very real security concerns for school districts and those tasked with keeping our children safe, particularly for schools located in high-crime locations. Some of the most common challenges include:

1. Schools have many entry and exit points, making the building and grounds hard to secure;

2. A lack of school security personnel, such as school resource officers (i.e., police officers in schools);

3. Limitations in training and experience in school safety personnel;  

4. Shortcomings in security measures such as access control or cameras systems;

5. The wide availability of weapons (including knives and firearms) in the community, makes it a challenge to limit them from getting into schools.

Many of these issues are often beyond the control of those tasked with school safety, such as school resource officers (SROs), security personnel, and their supervisors or managers. However, there are some tools that can help complete their essential mission.

The Need for School Threat Assessment

Data from the Center for Homeland Defense and Security’s K-12 School Shooting Database (SSDB) present some of the alarming statistics. According to the SSDB, the overall number of school shootings (including active shooter incidents, non-active shooter incidents, drive-by shootings, suicides, etc.) has been increasing steadily over the last 50 years.

Active shooter incidents have also become more commonplace, especially in the last five years. Between 2020 and 2024, the number of active shooter incidents in schools averaged K-12 averaged 244 incidents annually. In the 50 years before that, the average was 31 incidents annually. In 2024 so far, there have already been 190 school shootings. The increase in active shooter incidents is particularly troubling, because these incidents tend to be mass shootings that result in numerous injuries and deaths. For more information on dealing with active shooter incidents specifically, see our blog post on threat assessment and active shooter prevention.

The year of 2018 was particularly bad, with 11 active shooter incidents occurring in public schools that year – the highest number ever recorded. Two of these were mass shootings with death counts in the double-digits (17 in Parkland, Florida and 10 in Santa Fe, Texas). More recently, a horrific mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas killed 21 people in 2022, re-igniting widespread fear and outrage across the nation.

As horrible as these events are, the number of incidents pales in comparison to non-lethal violence in our schools. According to the Center for Disease Control’s 2019 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 8% of students had been in a physical fight on school property in the past 12 months, and more than 7% were threatened or injured with a weapon. Additionally, nearly 9% of students that year had reportedly missed school in the previous month because they felt unsafe at school or during their commute.

According to the latest available data from the School Survey on Crime and Safety (SSOCS), 67% of schools reported at least one violent crime during the 2021-2022 school year, while 35% of schools recorded physical attacks or fights (without weapons). That same year, approximately 20% of schools reported at least one serious violent incident at school.

Student and School Threat Assessment

The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) recently coined the term “student threat assessment,” which refers to a systematic approach to evaluating the likelihood that a student will commit a violent act after an expressed threat or threatening behaviors. As part of this approach, school threat assessments are performed by interdisciplinary school-based teams who observe student behaviors and communications to identify individuals who might be likely to harm or attack other students. This offers protection against internal threats.

More information is available about these school-based threat assessment teams in our recent blog post, “School Behavioral Threat Assessment in VA: A Model Program.”

There are other forms of threat assessment that are relevant to protecting our schools. You can read about some of the most common threat assessment approaches in our guides for law enforcement and security professionals.

You can also learn more about student threat assessment and school safety more generally by checking out the Center for Homeland and Defense Security’s School Shooting Safety Research Compendium and the following resources from the NIJ:

• “Five Facts About Mass Shootings in K-12 Schools”

• ·“What Does the Data Reveal About Violence in Schools?”

• “School Safety: Research on Gathering Tips and Addressing Threats”

Opportunities for Prevention

Students and staff face two distinct threats – those from inside the school (internal threats) and those from outside the school (external threats). From 1996 through July 22, 2024, 41% of school shooting incidents in the U.S. were committed by current or former students. The others were committed by people external to the school.

The good news though, is that it is possible (though not easy) to predict these tragedies. School threat assessment can be effective. The majority of high-profile school shootings do not occur spontaneously. The K-12 SSDB data reveals that half of active shooter incidents occurring in public schools are pre-planned. Perpetrators select their targets to achieve specific motives, such as the resolution of a grievance or to make an ideological statement.

Most often, people who carry out a K-12 mass shooting show some warning signs. They tend to engage in certain pre-attack behaviors and may show outward signs of crisis that are expressed to their peers through social media or other ways. These signs often manifest as mental health challenges, inability to cope with their emotions, and outward display of suicidal thoughts. In fact, the research suggests that over 90% of people committing K-12 mass shootings were found to be suicidal before or during the shooting. Most also had experienced significant childhood trauma, and typically had histories of antisocial behavior.

Those behaviors, if identified and addressed, can reduce the likelihood of a targeted violence incident at your school. School security personnel need the ability to be able to help identify students who may be a threat (to support intervention) AND protect against external threats.

Similarly, school teachers, staff, and administrators need to be trained on how to share information with security personnel on students who need intervention or potential external threats to the building.

Observe to Prevent

An important component of prevention is to identify potentially threatening individuals or situations ahead of time. This is done through observation and systematic assessment of the school location and the people in it.

An important concept is situational awareness. Teachers already have a lot on their plates, so it is essential we provide them with easy ways to help them be more aware of their environment and communicate with school safety staff about potential threats. This could involve relaying information on an at-risk youth with the school threat assessment team, or sharing information about an unknown individual observing the school parking lot with school safety staff. One way to help them identify potential threats is through Situational Awareness Training.

For school safety staff, we need to go beyond situational awareness and focus on active threat assessment. At Second Sight, we use the term active threat assessment to describe the identification of immediate, imminent, or active threats. This threat assessment methodology involves systematically assessing the environment, identifying suspicious individuals (also known as persons of interest), and evaluating the extent these persons are a threat. More information about the active threat assessment methodology is available in our recent blog post - Active Threat Assessment: Identify Potential, Imminent, And Immediate Threats.

Learn More

Second Sight can help train your teacher and school safety personnel through our online observation courses. Learn more by contacting us, visiting our courses page, or even signing up for our free 30-minute Introduction to Active Threat Assessment training course.